A curious new play

Makeup on, costumes setup, Johnson theater is ready to put on their next play of the year, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. This time, theater is introducing projections and new effects to bring the story of a fifteen year old Christopher Boone to life.

“This play is about a boy, we don’t know if he has autism or asperger’s syndrome. He is saying “hi” to his neighbors dog, [and] the dog is dead, and he’s trying to figure out what happened to his mother because his father said his mother is dead, [while] he’s trying to figure out who killed the dog. It’s a really cool show we have a lot of productions its very fun,” sophomore Erika Warrix said.

To simulate what the boy is thinking and feeling in his autistic state, theater is going to be using lights and projections on stage to give the audience the same thoughts that Boone experiences. With this addition, there will be trigger warnings to ensure everyone’s safety during the show.

“We’re going to have projectors all around the theater cues like when he’s doing a math problem we’re going to have math problems, when we’re talking about Mr. Sherus, he’s going to be up, or in the train station,” Warrix said.

Cole Lunsford came up with the idea to help donate funds to Autism Awareness.

“It was in the preparation for starting our show, the person that plays our main character, Cole Lunsford, he wanted to do more to spread awareness because he’s really passionate about it, so he came up with the idea to do that wristbands and raise money,” sophomore stage manager Micki Garcia said.

The funds gathered by sales of wristbands will go to charities like Autism Awareness that raise funds to promote awareness and fund research to better understand autism.

“So we are selling these little wristbands, and all of the money that were raising is going back towards charities for raising awareness for autism, and of course the main character in our show represents a person with autism,” Garcia said.

The use of projections will be used to show what is going through the characters mind and how his disability affects how he looks at things differently from other people. Running the projections will take some more effort on the theater students part, there will be people working at a board waiting for cues to play the projections on stage during the show.

“There’s not going to be anyone in the wings accept for the managers and deck crew; we’re going to have a projection person up there when the head stage manager gives them the cue then they’re going to hit that for the projection. I think there might be some sound,” Warrix said.

The play will run in the black box beginning Nov 8 thru Nov 11 with a matinee on Sunday at 2 pm.